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India

another look at that divine smile called Hassan

March 26, 2010

Hassan appears abruptly on NH48, without an arch, without an announcement, with no landmark at all. Arriving from Bangalore, you turn right from the highway to go into town. The train delivers you into the same street, which is named the Bangalore-Mangalore Road. You cannot yet fly in—birds still command the airspace over land allotted [...]

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trifling with history in Halebid

March 17, 2010

Two minutes before arriving in Halebid a farm came up, its house painted in pink and green fluorescent colors completely foreign to this region, but our eyes were drawn beyond the startling walls of the house to a mound shaped like the smooth top of a giant sarcophagus fifty meters behind the house. The mound, [...]

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a coffee-table story of Angadi

January 13, 2010

There isn’t an outlet that serves a decent cup of coffee in Malnad. The little shops that make it use instant-coffee powder; but if you are desperate for good coffee, knock on the door of the coffee-planter. His woman will serve it with a fluff of froth with a wee bit of powder on top, [...]

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the eye and Madurai

January 6, 2010

I spent an entire day at the Aravind Eye Hospital, founded by Dr. Venkataswamy thirty years ago, and which many say is the second great temple in Madurai. In the book From Here to Nirvana, which is a Lonely Planet kind of guide to ashrams and temples, the Aravind Hospital is one prominent destination. The [...]

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the Hoysalas: brigand chiefs who became kings

December 27, 2009

In my last post I told you that all the public walls of Bangalore are painted over with scenes of ruins of our historical monuments, and larger-than-hoarding depictions of our beasts and birds and beaches. I am sitting in the Cafe Coffee Day by the highway at Hirisave, a hundred and ten kilometers west of [...]

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Kadamane: kal, aaj, aur kal

August 2, 2009

Their meal is a mess on the plate and a mess round the mouth—the kids seem to like what they are eating. For the smallest children the ayahs squeeze the morsels dry in their hands and push them into the mouths, a child at a time, patiently drawing them back from constant distraction. This creche [...]

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A Giant Theater

July 26, 2009

In such a vast panorama only a fifth—maybe tenth—of the land is filled with trees. The rest is taken by thigh-high, chest-high cones of the shrub. The shrubs in a given patch are all trimmed to the same height and, seen level, seeing the height they have climbed and the depths they’ve plunged, they are [...]

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the view from Munzerabad club

June 9, 2009

Years ago, I often shuttled with my parents between Bangalore (and Mysore) and Mangalore, and crossed the coffee-belt midway. In all my memories I peer through the trees of the plantations from the rear window, always through mist or rain or the dark, looking for the fabled estate-mansions. I saw my first plantation-homes these last [...]

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Gandhiji’s Sabarmathi Ashram

March 25, 2009

Once he had worn his clothes, and sandals, and spectacles, and after he’d gathered his stick, his packing was done. The march to Dandi was also his final departure from the Sabarmati Ashram. Almost nothing was left to leave behind, and his other possession, the love of millions of Indians, was not in his possession [...]